Migration from TFS2008 to TFS2012 -possible to keep history?

Bellisio

We are in process of migrating from TFS2008 to TFS2012 and I'm hoping to be able to copy over the contents of each database's source control folder from the old server to the new server, and retain my change history.

In trying myself, it didn't work. Here were my steps:
1. Open SSMS with EngineOptions config file listing TFS2008
2. Unlink a database and close SSMS
3. In TFS2008, get latest onto my local drive from the server for this DB
4. Create Team project in TFS2012 for this DB and copy in all folders from my local drive up to the new TFS folder for this DB
5. Alter EngineOptions config to use TFS2012, open SSMS
6. Click the database, tell it to link; put in the new TFS server and point to the prepared folder
7. now I get errors - must be empty folder. So I deleted all from the folder, now I can link.
But no history... of course.
I tried to copy the old folder contents now, after linking, but got error (sorry, at this point I was not writing down what I did so I don't have the message).

is there anywhere that you have instructions for migrating from one version of TFS to the next, and preserving history, or do I need to start fresh?
Thanks

stanori

Hi Bellisio,

Thanks for your post. In regards to your particular question about migrating the history and source control contents of your TFS repository, we do not have any specific recommendations on the actual migration of the repo contents as this is something specific to the TFS backend. Here are some links to help get you started on the migration within TFS:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404883
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6776 ... to-another

When working in SQL Source Control, the following steps are recommended for your situation:

- unlink the affects DB's prior to the repo move
- Make the change in repo location
- Once the repo is located at it's new location: relink the affected DB's in SSMS

(The relinking will rebuild the underlying working base and transient folders on the local machine where SQL Source Control is installed)

The important part to note is that the history of the changes is read from TFS directly, so if the history is lost within the actual source control backend, SQL Source Control will not be able to read in the history. Hope this helps a little.

Best Regards,
Steve